Pasteur, Louis, 1822-1895; Scientists -- France -- Biography
Signor Susani was looking forward to producing for that one year 30,000
ounces of seed. In the presence of the prodigious activity of this
veritable factory--where, besides the microscope women, more than one
hundred persons were occupied in various ways, washing the mortars with
which the moths are pounded before being put under the microscopes,
cleansing the slides, etc.; in fact, doing those various delicate but
simple operations which had formerly been pronounced to be
impracticable--Pasteur’s thoughts went back to his experiments in the
Pont-Gisquet greenhouse, to the modest beginnings of his process, now so
magnificently applied in Italy. A month before this, J. B. Dumas,
presiding at a scientific meeting at Clermont Ferrand, had said--
“The future belongs to Science; woe to the nations who close their eyes
to this fact.... Let us call to our aid on this neutral and pacific
ground of Natural Philosophy, where defeats cost neither blood nor
tears, those hearts which are moved by their country’s grandeur; it is
by the exaltation of science that France will recover her prestige.”
Those same ideas were expressed in a toast given by Pasteur in the name
of France at a farewell banquet, when the 300 members of the
Sericiculture Congress were present.
“Gentlemen, I propose a toast--To the peaceful strife of Science. It is
the first time that I have the honour of being present on foreign soil
at an international congress; I ask myself what are the impressions
produced in me, besides these courteous discussions, by the brilliant
hospitality of the noble Milanese city, and I find myself deeply
impressed by two propositions. First, that Science is of no nationality;
and secondly, in apparent, but only in apparent, contradiction, that
Science is the highest personification of nationality. Science has no
nationality because knowledge is the patrimony of humanity, the torch
which gives light to the world. Science should be the highest
personification of nationality because, of all the nations, that one
will always be foremost which shall be first to progress by the labours
of thought and of intelligence.
“Let us therefore strive in the pacific field of Science for the
pre-eminence of our several countries. Let us strive, for strife is
effort, strife is life when progress is the goal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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